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How Do You Give Money to the Homeless ?

We visited Paris a few months ago. As we left the train and the station, we met a beggar, and a few streets down the next one… and then the next. How to deal with this as a tourist? Emotionally, we wanted to give money, rationally we hesitated: would the Parisians be pleased if millions of tourists start funding homeless people, potentially increasing their numbers ? What will an individual homeless person do with the donation? Buy food, finance a roof for the night, or buy drugs? Or is the homeless person part of a commercial enterprise? Shockingly, there were couples getting ready for the night on the street with babies. Should we supported them too?

Just like tipping and charity, giving money to homeless people has a bad side to it. It crowds out community- and state-involvement. A minimum existence should not be left to the whims of tourists. Shouldn’t it be something that we collectively decide to guarantee for everyone? In the perfect society, there ought to be no need to beg, there shouldn’t be a need to rely on the irregular kindness of passing people.

A dilemma. In the end we think we found a way out of this. We started counting the number of beggars that we met. We tripled that number and after we returned home we searched and found a charity in Paris that supports homeless people. We donated the calculated sum to that organization. Not the best solution, but workable.

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2 thoughts on “How Do You Give Money to the Homeless ?”

I agree with you partially. I do give to poor people on the street, since in my country there is no government system to help the poor like in France. I also give any small change to poor people when I leave a country for home, but I realize that I may not be doing the local population a favor.